Cheat Sheet

Mark Bowden turned the chaos of Somalia into a book and hit film, Black Hawk Down. At that point in 1997 the country had already been without a firm leader for six years. "Unbelievably, in the decade since then, it has only gotten worse," says Bowden in an op-ed for today's Washington Post. "While the world has largely stood by, the Horn of Africa has served as a laboratory for anarchy--and the results aren't pretty." Somalia today, he writes, is on the brink of becoming an Islamist state, and already harbors terrorists who wreak their havoc around the region and the world. "Here we have a country that has been in crisis for nearly twenty years," said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. special representative for Somalia. "And we say, well okay, we'll chase down some pirates and send some bags of rice. It is not enough." There are many things that the Obama Administration could do to help stabalize Somalia, write Bowden, but the simplest would be to stop the casualty ridden practice of missile attacks. "Whatever is gained by eliminating one murderous zealot," says Bowden, "is lost by turning entire Somali communities against Western aid efforts."